The current state and future needs of decision making: knowledge, practice, tools and training options

Decision making in emergency management (EM) is challenging. Australian EM organisations need to ensure that they appropriately train, develop and support their personnel so that they can make effective decisions in challenging situations. This report synthesises the findings from the first phase of the Natural Hazards Research Australia (the Centre) decision making research project and provides a situational analysis of operational EM decision making in Australia. The report first summarises three literature reviews that examine: emerging issues (stress and fatigue, interoperability and ethical decision making) (Butler et al., 2024); use of cognitive aids (Penney et al., 2024); and EM decision making training (McLennan et al., 2024). The results of a survey and a series of semi-structured interviews are presented, providing a detailed examination of EM decision making in Australia. One-hundred and fifty-four participants completed all of the questions in the survey (84 per cent of the participants were male, 15.5 per cent were female and 0.5 per cent were non-binary). Thirty-six people participated in the semi-structured interviews (86 per cent of the participants were male and 14 per cent were female).